


all prayers, of joining you

by rosehale



Category: King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-16
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-07-13 01:39:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16007618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosehale/pseuds/rosehale
Summary: A girl from Arthur's past, a woman for Arthur's future.





	all prayers, of joining you

**Author's Note:**

> Title from 'In The Woods Somewhere' by Hozier.

He’s different from what he was, before. Ida remembers skinned palms, the cold bite of Londinium air coming off the river, blue eyes reflecting morning sunlight. Arthur, who grew up quick and clever, with a habit for fighting. Ida had been left with a distantly related seamstress aunt after her mother died, calloused fingers fidgeting with embroidery late into the night, always running down the street to the whorehouse to find Arthur. Two children, loose in the world, with no one to teach them how to grow up but each other. She remembers noticing the way he smiled, dimples and crinkling eyes, the way it felt like a kick in the gut. She remembers him bringing her an orange, the juice running down their hands as their feet hung off the jetty, citrus on her tongue, spitting pips into the river. She remembers loving Arthur from the very first moment.

That first time, in middle youth, the heat of summer, knowing the way a man and a woman were supposed to couple, of course they did, but fumbling anyway. The window thrown open, searching for a cool breeze, a treasured afternoon free from chores and work. Arthur’s room, tucked away in the back of the whorehouse, his rough hands trembling with how hard he worked to keep gentle. It hurt, at first, but Ida bit her tongue and remembered to breathe. It wasn’t usual pain, fast and blinding, that you found in this neighbourhood, but a pain that promised goodness, threaded through with something hot and addictive. The sounds Arthur made against her throat, wanting and needy and raspy, that made it worth it.

They practiced, and by winter they were experts. Growing up in a brothel taught Arthur how to do clever things with his fingers, his tongue. Whispers he’d heard in dim corridors, between giggling girls after clients. When Ida told her friends what Arthur did under the thick winter coverlet, they blushed, but begged for more details. She watched the way their eyes followed him after, knowing what he was capable of, and Ida would smile, and later, she’d let him take her upstairs, undress her, lie her down. Hot breath, damp skin.

Arthur grew a beard and all that sparring and escaping and wriggling out of tight situations left him with thick muscle that moved under warm skin. Broad shoulders she could follow in a crowd. Ida finally had breasts that could fill out dresses properly. She liked the way Arthur would sling an arm around her shoulders when a man’s eyes would linger too long. The way he would drag her into the side of him, as if to say, _mine_. A new girl in the brothel tried to play her clever tricks on him, and Ida made sure to leave a loving bruise on the side of his throat for the girl to see the next day, as if to say, _mine_.

That horrible summer fever, when Ida lost big gaps of time, waking periodically to mumble nonsense and refuse food. She dragged herself through nightmare after nightmare, roaring waves, desert dunes, but every time she opened her eyes, Arthur was there, sweating from the heat of the tiny room, eyes bruised from lack of sleep. _Drink, please, love,_ he’d beg, and it hurt so to refuse him. She’d screamed her throat raw, the fever ghosts who lurked in the doorways, reached for her from under the bed. Arthur, pacing, pacing, pacing. Arthur, never leaving.

He’d fuck her into the straw mattress, the worn cloth of his pillowcase between her teeth, her hair in his fist. It felt good, to feel him all desperate like that, wanting her like that. The sun rising over the rooftops, falling in warm slants across the bed. _Fuck, Ida,_ he’d groan into her shoulder, and the way he said it, breathless and wanting, it sounded like a prayer.

And then the water drains, and he disappears for a day, and then another. Ida hears whispers, someone has drawn the sword from stone, is being held by the King. There are too many Blacklegs crawling around the brothel for her to get anything out of the girls. So she waits, and worries, and joins the crowd before the tower, searching for blonde hair. She does not chant with the rest of the crowd, although she lets herself mouth the words so she is not dragged to the front to be made an example of. The King has done nothing to earn her reverie. Arthur is shuffled out, barely able to take a step, and Ida forgets how to breathe. That blank look on his face, so deep in grief he can't himself begin to comprehend it. Something awful has happened, with something even more awful to come. They hold the sword out to him, present him as the Born King, and even as her mind whirls to make sense of everything, the truth of it settles in her belly. She thinks a part of her always knew. That there was something different in the origins of his blood and hers. The way he held himself, something regal that couldn’t be taught. The great, dark bird arrives, and Ida is already halfway to the steps, unsure of what she is trying to do but desperate to reach him, to save him, or die with him. He searches for her, and she reaches for him, but he is gone by the time she gets there, over a cliff’s edge. Far from her reach. She is left in an empty square, mud on her boots, his name still in her mouth.

Ida has never been without Arthur before. He is as much a part of her as her own limbs. Vanished into the forest, a group of rebels. She thinks of going to find him, but where to go? Where to start? Anger bitter in her gut, that he hasn't taken her with him. He’s never left her behind. She dreams of him, fingers curled into blonde hair where his face is between her legs. The scrape of his beard against the soft skin of her inner thighs. The tease of teeth, the flat pressure of his tongue. But she wakes, soaked in her own sweat and shivering despite it, to an empty bed. Her own hands have to ease the tension her subconscious has created. All his clothes still sit in the chest at the end of the bed, folded, waiting to be worn again. She wears one of his shirts beneath her dress for the day, just to smell him on her skin.

One of the old gang comes to tell her of stirrings in the forest, of journey’s taken to lands not of this world. Ida is not one for religion, but when she passes the towering Cathedral on her way home, she pauses to light a candle. Behind closed eyelids, she sees him, stirring from sleep to smile at her, bring her back into the warmth of his chest. Silently, her lips form his name. _Come home,_ she whispers.

When he returns, it is with a mixture of old men and new. Ida cannot decide whether to scream at him or to cry with joy, so she does a confusing mixture of both. He starts with _alright, love?_ but when he manages to stop her from beating against his chest, he murmurs against her ear, _I dreamed of you_. He tells her a story of hidden caves, a magic sword, a mage who can inhabit animals. He tells her a story of a small boy, blood on his hands, drifting down the river with his father’s dying words still ringing in his ears. Something has changed within him, something she doesn’t know. _Stay in the city_ , he asks, _be my spy._ She refuses, cries some more, tells him the neighbourhood they grew up in is ashes. Arthur holds her head in his hands and waits for her to start breathing rhythmically again. _I want to show you something,_ he says.

The air in the forest is different. Away from the smoke and filth and bodies, the light is clear and bright. Leaves crunch under her boots, and her skirt catches in the wind. She still startles every time Arthur touches her, expecting it to be a ghost. She half believed he was dead. She was half dead without him. Arthur’s nook is lit by a fire pit, hidden by curtains, his bed low to the ground. With the smell of smoke, the smell of trees, the smell of earth, he takes off her dress, stands at the foot of the bed and looks down at her, fidgeting for a sheet to cover herself with.  _It was too dangerous for you to be here, before_ , he explains. Ida has to close her eyes at the warmth of his body covering hers. It was worse to be without him, no matter the danger. 

She has him, just him, for a night, before the assassination attempt. They’re at the top of some warehouse and everything smells like straw, but Goosefat and Bedivere have made themselves scarce, and in all the anticipation of tomorrow and the grief of all that has passed, Arthur fucks her in the straw like they’re farmers out in the countryside, blissfully ignorant. He arranges his jacket beneath her, the leather warm from his body, and she feels like an animal protected in it’s cocoon, between Arthur and the straw. He’s nervous for tomorrow, she can tell by the way he holds her, leaves finger-bruises. The moonlight watches through gaps in the wood, and Arthur comes all shivery and lovely, warm inside her. After, he rests with his head on her chest, letting her card her fingers through his hair, slow and peaceful. _Is everything going to be okay?_   She asks, a whisper in the haze of late night. She hears him sigh, but he doesn’t reply. Ida curls closer, and breathes in the smell of him.

Later, much later, in the bright late afternoon sunshine, when they’re running (because somehow, they always end up running), just when Ida thinks she needs to stop and vomit because she can’t breathe, Arthur shoves her into an open doorway. She trips, sprawling flat into the hallway, an old woman watching from where she washes dishes in the kitchen sink. She’s furious, momentarily, once the pain in her knees and palms fades, but when she pulls herself up and returns to the streets, she understands. They’re long gone. He’s done it on purpose, knew she would never leave of her own accord, to save herself. She's no longer suspicious, a lone woman, hurrying through the streets, head down, desperate to get home. Forced to be left behind, again. The black arrows plume smoke with each sharp crack.

She feels it happen, in her gut, when he takes the sword with both hands. She’s a block or so out from the bathhouse, trying to follow the commotion, and she knows. He’s not Arthur anymore. Perhaps he never really was that Arthur that she knew. He’s a King. He was always a King, by birthright. By the time she gets to the safe house, she feels as if she doesn’t know him. The city burns, with fire, and rebellion.

When they’re crammed into that tiny row boat, Arthur crouching uncomfortably to hold Blue, who’s screamed himself hoarse, and then cried himself to sleep, Ida is reminded of a memory. Last Spring, before everything, when it was just them, they thought she was with child. They’d been reckless, Ida has vague memories of Arthur hastily buying them a room at the pub they were drinking at because he just had to have her, right then. Drunk and giddy and half delirious with the warmth and promise of a new season. Only a week later, when her monthly bleeding didn’t arrive, did Ida realise her mistake. She’d found Arthur by the docks, face raised to the new sun, half watching the stock come in. Mumbling her concerns, flushed with shame at making such an error. But the sunshine was warm across her shoulders and Arthur had crushed her in an embrace. Only days later, she woke with blood sticky between her thighs, a cramp low in her belly. Arthur had tried not to let her see that he was disappointed. They’d agreed to be more careful, that it wasn’t the time, but every time Arthur was near a babe, since then, her world grinds to a halt for a moment. Blue mumbles in his sleep, turns his face into Arthur’s shoulder. She knows Arthur must have a right ache in his back, crouching like that, supporting an almost grown child’s deadweight. But he sits like that all night, just to soothe the boy.

Arthur has been many things to her, a nuisance, a friend, a confidante, a lover, a partner, but not a stranger. He feels far away, as this new weight settles on his shoulders. This is a journey he must walk on his own. They are separated, in the last, exhausted, rush of it all. Him and his men, the sword across his back, a vendetta to avenge, a throne to claim. Ida tries to hold the city together as it smoulders to coals.

He is returned to her, bleeding, and bruised. He sits on the steps of the dais, his dead Uncle’s throne behind him. The dust of the tower clings to Ida’s clothes as her boots ring on the stone. He looks up at her entrance, eyes dark with fatigue. She knows, after this fleeting moment, they will never be alone again, even if he does choose to take her as his Queen. The whole land will be watching their King. _King_. Ida remembers herself, gathers her skirts to kneel. The stone aches against her joints. She bows her head, murmurs it to him, _my king_. She hears the rustle of his movement, and then warm hands around her shoulders, lifting her up, her body uncurling. _You will never kneel to me,_ Arthur says, his voice weighty with meaning. Ida touches the line of his jaw. He smells of blood and sweat and death. When she kisses him, though, eyes closed against the ruins of the throne room, her fingers slipping into his hair, he still tastes just like Arthur.

His coronation is a hasty affair, organised around the clean up of the city. Ida feels as if she knows what is to come. A princess, willowy and matching blonde, beautiful clean hands. Arthur walks into a room and she walks straight out. He builds his table into the early hours of the morning, smoothing non existent splinters. And then he goes to find her, asleep in the smallest guest chamber she could find. She would be back in the city, if she could, but Arthur had insisted. It is too dark in the castle, the hallways are suffocating. The mage had whispered of dark magic beneath the floors. She hears his footsteps, reaches for the dagger at her nightstand. _Relax, it’s only me,_ he whispers, a shadow making its way to her bed. He passes the dying hearth, and she sees he is barefoot, old trousers she’d mended herself, a white shirt pushed up his forearms. It is a familiar sight, Arthur crawling into her bed in the dark. But this is King Arthur. She turns away from his embrace. He presses his mouth between her shoulder blades, through the soft material of her nightdress. _Don’t abandon me now,_ he whispers, _not you_. As fast as Ida rolled away, she is rolling back, a strange vulnerable look on his face that she wants to erase. She kisses him so she doesn’t have to speak and they undress clumsily beneath the heavy duvet. Having him inside her again feels like a homecoming.

His shirts get nicer. Small white buttons, instead of a ragged tie. Someone arrives to actually properly cut his hair, instead of his usual once a year knife job. Ida watches from the doorway as he sits serenely in his chair, a man brandishing a pair of scissors too close to his throat. Arthur winks at her, and she smothers a laugh. Ducking away into the hallway feels just like ducking into an alleyway to escape his charm. She didn’t expect that.

Arthur calls her to the throne room one afternoon. She has spent the day in the city, seeing to water supplies, and is tired and frustrated when she returns to the castle. She passes Maggie on her way through, her hair of spun gold, her dress shining with it's rich material. Maggie would know how to stand beside Arthur, how to comfort him as he bowed under the weight of a kingdom. Arthur is at his table, sat quietly, a goblet of wine beside him, bread and cheese on a plate. He smiles at her entrance, and the peace that moves across his face soothes her irritation. She moves to stand beside him, stealing a crust. _I have something for you_ , he says, and Ida follows him to the rarely used throne. A crown sits on the cushion, almost identical to the one that sits in his bedroom, only the inlaid gems are emeralds, not rubies. _Sorry it took me so long_ , he murmurs, and he looks almost sheepish, _the last queen, her crown was lost. I wanted you to have a new one._ Ida can’t speak. The two of them stand before the throne, Ida dares not touch the beautiful piece of royalty. _Are you sure it should be me?_ She asks. _There is no one else it could be,_ Arthur says. The sunlight pours in through the open doors, and Ida slips her hand into Arthur’s, the familiar tangle of fingers. Outside, a city is rebuilt anew, and inside, a new royal family is formed.


End file.
